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Nick Birnie
School of Informatics
University of Edinburgh
Introduction
In computer vision, the exponential map is the natural generalisation of the ordinary exponential function to matrix elements. The technique is based on generating a manifold
embedding of the geometric features of the scene on which to estimate trajectories primarily
of motion or invariance. An advantage of using the exponential map is the existence of a
closed form time-update equation for the state.
Definition
The most natural definition of the exponential map arises in the study of Differential Geometry as the generalisation of the exponential function. Consider the solution of a linear
ordinary differential equation of the form
f(t) = Lf (t) = f(t) = eLt f (0)
in which L is a linear operator. The exponentiation follows from the regular series expansion
where f is a scalar valued function. However, for vector valued f , e takes on the characteristics of the exponential map.
This concept is readily applicable in Lie Theory - the study of groups that form differentiable manifolds - where it generalises the exponential function to the infinitesimal elements
of Lie Groups. This section formalises both definitions.
2.1
Let M be a differentiable manifold and p a point on M . Let Tp M denote the tangent space
to M at p. Then for a vector v Tp M , there exists a unique geodesic 7 M , such that
(0) = p and 0 (0) = v. The exponential map of p, is then defined as expp (v) = (1), i.e.
the exponential map is the point reached by the transport of .
2.2
Let G be a Lie group1 and g be its Lie algebra2 (see [3] for a formal definition of these terms).
Several definitions of the exponential map are possible. In computer vision, the most natural
is the special case where G is a matrix Lie group. The exponential map is simply defined to
coincide with the matrix exponential series expansion.
exp(X) =
X
Xk
k=0
1
1
= I + X + X2 + X3 +
k!
2
6
Informally, a Lie group consists of infinitesimal elements with the property that it is also a differentiable
manifold.
2
Again informally, the elements of g compose the tangent space to G at the identity element.
h
Figure 1: Transformation, g, of a camera frame, C (x,y,z), relative to the world frame, W
(X,Y,Z). (Source [3])
3.1
Exponential Representation
A family of matrices satisfying this property is known as the orthogonal matrices. They
form a group O(3) under the group operation of matrix multiplication. An additional constraint is imposed to limit the group to be only orientation preserving matrices. Specifically,
the requirement is that the determinant equals +1. The terminology is similar, denoted
SO(3), for the special orthogonal matrices.
SO(3) , {R R33 | RRT = I, det(R) = +1}
Although the number of parameters is potentially 3 3 = 9, the constraint imposed by
RRT = I implies that only three of these are free, which equals the dimensionality of the
space of rotation matrices. A parametric representation for rotation matrices has therefore
been developed.
A continuous map R(t) : t 7 SO(3) is defined representing a rotational trajectory
T
by a translation and a rotation matrix. These can be written together in block from, as
follows
Rwc Twc
g=
(1)
0
1
This allows complete representation of a rigid body motion. It follows immediately that
the number of parameters is six. Together, the collection of all these matrices is precisely the
group of orientation preserving Euclidean transformations, SE(3), for the Special Euclidean
group.
Rwc Twc
3
SE(3) , g =
| Rwc SO(3), Twc R
0
1
Based on the homogeneous transformation, encapsulating the complete rigid body motion, it is possible to represent the position of the object at the next time step in a matrix
exponential form. The tangent space is given by the following Lie algebra
v
3
|
so(3), v R
se(3) , =
0 0
where v is defined as T (t)
(t)T (t). The intuitive explanation for this is the effect on
the translational velocity by applying a rotation. Such a translation is known as a twist.
Together the first row of the matrix defines the unique geodesic in the direction of the
tangent vector at g(t), as introduced in 2. The tangent vector to the geodesic is given by
the following ordinary differential equation.
g(t)
= g(t)
The solution of which is given by
g(t) = et g(0)
where e t is the matrix exponential, obtained from the exponential series expansion
e =
X
n
(t)
n=1
n!
exp : se(3) SE(3); t
7 et
Bibliographic Notes
The content of 3 was composed following meticulous study of [3], a sample chapter of which
is available from the books website. In particular, Figure 1 should be noted to originate
4
from those authors, together with the notational quirks and the derivation of the exponential
map. Much more detail on the exponential representation is available in the book. A point
of interest is the logarithmic map, which is given by the right inverse of the exponential map.
Applications in motion tracking first appear in [1]. The authors represent the kinematic
chain of humans as a product of exponential maps and produce a differential model of motion,
showing comparable performance to previous methods.
Another application is statistical shape estimation, where the computation of geometric
invariants from image data is performed. Fletcher et al [2] generalised Principal Components
Analysis to operate on the non-Euclidean geometry of Lie groups, and named the method
Principal Geodesic Analysis. In contrast to motion tracking, the authors use the medial
representations as Lie group elements. An algorithm is then given for computing the basis
vectors (which are geodesics on the Lie group).
References
[1] C. Bregler and J. Malik. Tracking people with twists and exponential maps. In Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern
Recognition, CVPR 98, pages 8, Washington, DC, USA, 1998. IEEE Computer Society.
[2] P. Thomas Fletcher, Conglin Lu, and Sarang Joshi. Statistics of shape via principal
geodesic analysis on lie groups. Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, IEEE Computer Society Conference on, 1:95, 2003.
[3] Yi Ma, Stefano Soatto, Jana Kosecka, and S. Shankar Sastry. An Invitation to 3-D
Vision: From Images to Geometric Models. SpringerVerlag, 2003.